debian man page for netgroup

netgroup(5)						      Linux Reference Manual						       netgroup(5)

NAME
       netgroup - specify network groups

DESCRIPTION
       The  netgroup  file   defines  "netgroups",  which  are sets of (host, user, domain) tuples, used for permission checking when doing remote
       mounts, remote logins and remote shells.

       Each line in the file consists of a netgroup name followed by a by a list of members, where a member is either another netgroup name, or  a
       triple:

	      (host, user, domain)

       where  the  host,  user,  and domain are character strings for the corresponding components. Any of the three fields can be empty, in which
       case it specifies a "wildcard", or may consist of the string "-" to specify "no valid value". The domain field must  either  be	the  local
       domain name or empty for the netgroup entry to be used. This field does not limit the netgroup or provide security. The domain field refers
       to the domain in which the triple is valid, not the domain containing the the trusted host.

       A gateway machine should be listed under all possible hostnames by which it may be recognized:

	      gateway (server,,) (server-sn,,) (server-bb,,)

       The getnetgrent functions should normally be used to access the netgroup database.

FILES
       /etc/netgroup

SEE ALSO
       getnetgrent(3), exports(5), makedbm(8), ypserv(8)

WARNINGS
       The triple (,,domain) allows all users and machines trusted access, and has the same effect as the triple  (,,).  Use  the  host  and  user
       fields of the triple to restrict the access correctly to a specific set of members.

BUGS
       The Linux libc5 does not query the /etc/netgroup file directly, it only querys the NIS server for the groups. So the netgroup database must
       be stored in the form of a hashed dbm database just like the passwd(5) and group(5) databases.

       This manpage mentions getnetgrent(3), but it seems that manpage hasn't been written yet. Since getnetgrent() is part of GNU libc  it  might
       also be that it is documented in info format.

AUTHOR
       Thorsten Kukuk <kukuk@suse.de>

NIS
								     May 1999							       netgroup(5)